


the last day on earth

by Reiaji



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Post-Episode: s03 Chat Blanc, Post-Reveal Pre-Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Rabbit Alix Kubdel | Bunnyx, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27329134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reiaji/pseuds/Reiaji
Summary: The first time Marinette sees Chat Blanc, she's fourteen years old. The second time, fifteen—the third time, seventeen.The closer she grows to Adrien, the harder it is to save him.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 74
Kudos: 524





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Last Day On Earth, by Kate Miller-Heidke. Thanks to [Bren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrenanaBread/) and [Lisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stylostique) for your encouragement with this fic!
> 
> Contains canon violence and a brief mention of panic attacks.

The first time Marinette sees the end of the world, she's fourteen years old, and the open sky is the same color as the sea.

Chat Noir is white on blue on white, perfectly camouflaged by the silent city around him. Changed as he is, a flash of the familiar remains—in the way that he moves, that he speaks, that he stretches; in the way that he grins with his mouth too wide.

She sees him when the akuma turns his head away from her, tapping the bell that hangs at his throat.

She feels him in his heartbeat, prey-quick against the flat of her palm—every action of hers a reaction, perfectly mirrored, perfectly timed.

She hears him in the sing-song rhythms of his speech: _save me._

  


* * *

  


When she sees him like this—red-cheeked and grinning, alight with nervousness from head to toe—it's easy to guess how he gave her away.

Marinette is on the curb, asphalt dust between her toes, while Adrien and Kagami are huddled on the bench behind her. They speak in whispers, broken up by giggles. Marinette’s ice cream is dripping onto her knuckles; and she tastes it absentmindedly, sweetening her tongue, letting her thoughts turn to steam in the dry heat of summer.

Adrien isn't good at faking his feelings.

If he _was_ , she thinks—a little uncharitably—then he wouldn't keep up this dance that he's doing: leaning into Kagami and then pulling away; laying his hand on her knee and snatching it back; dabbing the sticky spots on her cheek while steadfastly refusing to look her in the eye.

He'd say _yes I do_ or _no I don’t_ , and he'd feign that he meant it, one way or the other. He wouldn't say _maybe_ , or _when I'm ready_ , or _when I'm sure_ —hurtful truths that chip at Kagami like flecks of flint being struck off a stone.

Adrien would never expose her _on purpose._ And yet the memory of Chat Blanc leaves her stretched out and colorless, with her skin worn thin at the elbows and knees. 

She's the better pretender between them. She knows this, too—from the way that he relaxes, full of ease, when she gives him a thumbs-up and her brightest smile.

  


* * *

  


Her fifteenth birthday is everything it should be. It's on a school day, which means that Marinette gets two parties—one in class, with her friends gathered around her; and one at home, sweltering in her parents' affection.

Her cousins call in the morning, each one speaking over the others, relying on Sabine to translate into French. Gina blows in like a fierce summer gale, sleepy-eyed with jet lag, pressing kisses to cheeks. Even Roland makes an appearance, bearing a small cake that tastes of nutmeg and oranges.

Her last visitor arrives soon after the sky darkens. Marinette's hair is damp from the shower as she climbs the ladder up to her bedroom. At first she doesn't see him, casually draped over the edge of her loft, a seamless blend with the black of the shadows. 

" _Salut_ , Marinette," says Chat, and she freezes. But his suit, his hair, his eyes—they're the right color. And his smile is right too, sparking warmth in her belly as she climbs to the upper level to join him.

He's sitting cross-legged at the head of her bed, holding a box inside his lap. As Marinette nears him, she sees that it's a parcel, wrapped in heavy paper and a satiny spray of ribbon.

"I have a birthday crown for the birthday princess," he says seriously. From behind his back, he produces something pink. It's a paper mache circlet, bedazzled with an appalling amount of rhinestones, glitter, and pawprint stickers.

Bemused, she combs her hair over one shoulder so she can set it in place atop her head.

"And what are you supposed to be? The birthday jester?"

Chat returns his hands behind his back and produces two more paper hats—these ones cone-shaped, topped with glittery pom-poms. Making direct eye contact, he lifts his hands above his head and sets one hat atop each of his ears.

Despite herself, she giggles, and his grin grows wider.

"I can't stay tonight," he says, as Marinette muffles her laughter with the back of her hand. "I really just came by to give you your present."

"Don't you want to see me open it?"

Chat places the package inside her lap. In one smooth movement, he leaps up to the trapdoor, silhouetting himself against a square of night sky. There's something ghostly in the way he moves—black against black, vanishing and un-vanishing. He'd look ethereal, if not for the pink pom-poms perfectly capping his silly little ears.

"It's kind of an embarrassing gift," he says. "For me, I mean. Not for you. You'll see. I hope you like it, though. Gotta go. Happy birthday!”

His mouth clamps shut, and he jerks a thumb over his shoulder, vacating her bedroom at record speed. Marinette can't help but blink in surprise.

She can tell—from the many uneven strips of tape—that Chat had wrapped the gift himself. She unsticks them slowly, leaving the paper untorn. The heavy layers fold back to reveal the ugliest scarf she's ever seen, long and lumpy and plum-blossom pink; clearly hand-knit, with skilless care.

Marinette presses the scarf to her face. Lumps or no lumps, it's softer than sin.

She wears it, ignoring Chloe’s mockery, for the better part of the next few months. Ugly as it undoubtedly is, it keeps her stitched together at the seams—a warm memory to wrap around her, warding off thoughts of that snow white world.

It works like magic—until it doesn’t.

  


* * *

  


The second time, Bunnyx doesn’t wait for her to be transformed. She appears with a neon-blue crackle of light in the exact center of Marinette’s bedroom, knocking her coffee from the desk onto the floor.

“Sorry,” she greets her, with a tiny grimace. “I’d say it’s nice to see you, but given the circumstances…”

Marinette is frozen inside her chair. She’s surrounded by sunlight and summer air, and her bedroom smells like the potted mint she’d been laboriously growing in a pot on her terrace. Even so, her pulse goes uneven, and she suddenly feels like a mouse in a trap. 

“Transform,” says Bunnyx. “Come with me, now.”

She stands, unsteadily, making eye contact with Tikki. “Should I call—“

“No,” comes the immediate, _certain_ answer. “Just you this time. Just like before.”

Marinette’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. All at once, she’s untethered from the room around her, and her body is as responsive as a block of wood.

“ _Ladybug_ ,” says Bunnyx, in a tone that brooks no argument—and her hazy vision snaps into clarity. In a moment, the magic of her transformation washes over her. She squeezes her eyes shut as Bunnyx takes her wrist, carefully tugging her into the burrow behind her. 

When she opens them again, the world is white and blue, and they’re standing on a rooftop thick with pale ash, in the shadow of a tower whose windows gape like mouths. 

“Be careful,” her companion warns her. “He’s been here a few months longer this time.”

The words are winding. Marinette almost staggers. The air in her lungs is thick—with dust, with panic.

“I know that you can do this, Ladybug,” Bunnyx continues. The use of her hero name regathers her attention, and some of her foggy-headedness clears. “I know that you fight him, and that you succeed in saving him. I’ve seen the future where you’ve already done it.”

 _Isn’t this the future?_ she wants to ask. But she only jerks her head in a nod.

“I believe in you. I know you’re up to the task.”

And then Bunnyx is gone, and her hands are cold, and her eyes are looking at empty space.

  


* * *

  


The second Chat Blanc is both still and silent.

So still that the shadows don’t seem to touch him, and so silent that even the hiss of her breath resounds in her ears like an alien heartbeat.

Just like Marinette, he’s another year older. His legs are longer, his shoulders broader. There’s a barely-there sharpness to the line of his jaw, offsetting the softness that clings to both cheeks.

No singing. No humming. No running across the rooftop to greet her, circling her in excitement, clawing at her suit. He doesn’t even turn—doesn’t even _look._ It sets the hairs of her arm on end.

“I know you’re not her,” he says to himself, as Marinette inches forward, yo-yo in hand. By now, she and Chat know the rooftops as well as they know the insides of their own heads. She ought to be glad for the extra room to maneuver, but instead, she feels unduly exposed. 

“Know I’m not who?”

“My Marinette.”

The pounding in her temples increases.

As though he can sniff her hesitation, the akuma tilts his head to look at her. It’s a snakelike motion, and his eyes are blue slits. Not at all like her kitten's, wide and green and curious, full of too many shifting colors to count.

"Did you come here to save me?" he asks, voice flat. Marinette doesn't waste her breath on an answer. She bites her tongue—not hard enough to bloody it—and spins her weapon in a blurry pink arc.

"You're not her," says Chat, and the words are cracked with hurt. "You don't even love me. You don't even _care_. You’ll just leave once you’ve won, and I’ll still be alone.”

The fight is brutal, but it's quick.

When it's over, Chat lays curled at her feet, looking small and quiet and weak. His eyes are shut behind the sweep of his bangs. His face—so familiar, and so _strange_ at the same time—is bruised from his temple to the right side of his jaw, where Marinette had slammed his head into the rooftop and held him there, spitting, while she ripped the bell from his throat.

The cure touches him before it touches everything else, but its light still clings to him as she drops to her knees, patting him down to make sure he's all there. Eyes. Lips. Hands. Hair. She slides two fingers inside his collar and feels for his pulse, a flutter in his throat.

(What is she _doing?_ She can’t be here.)

(She's supposed to find Bunnyx and travel back to her own time—lock up this memory and throw away the key.)

The thought flickers in and out of her ear, as easily ignored as a buzzing gnat.

But it barely matters what Marinette _thinks_ ; because an instant later, her eyes go dim, and a sharp, _sharp_ tug makes the air squeeze out of her lungs. There's a hand on her shoulder, and then—and _then_ —

And then Chat is gone, new Paris with him, and the burrow spits her back out into her bedroom. Still bruised, still gasping, still transformed, for what little it's worth—still dizzy with the feel of him clinging to her fingertips; phantom static, gone in the next breath.

Bunnyx is beside her, and Marinette whirls on her.

"How can this have happened again?" she demands. Fear sharpens her words to a cutting edge, but the older girl is soft in her response. 

"You know that I can’t tell you that, any more than I could tell you Hawkmoth’s identity. I'm sorry I can't do more. Really, I am."

Marinette drops her transformation in a rush of light. As soon as Tikki spirals out, she flies to her face and flattens against her cheek, nuzzling and murmuring in an attempt to offer comfort.

"You must be able to tell me something," she rasps. She sounds weak— _desperate_ —not at all like herself. "If it was something I did, or something to do with—"

She trails off, panting, her eyes gone wet. Something to do with _what,_ exactly?

The blood in her throat. The murmur in her chest. Her overpowering _need_ to see Chat open his eyes—hear his voice, hear his _laugh_ , hear her name on the tip of his tongue.

Bunnyx considers her, tugging her lip between her teeth. The weight of her pity is almost too much to bear.

"That scarf he gave you for your fifteenth birthday."

"What?" says Marinette, through the ringing in her ears.

"Stop wearing it," says Bunnyx. "Better yet, just get rid of it. I'm almost certain that that was the trigger."

It doesn't take much to figure out what she's saying. The trigger—just like the beret she’d sewn for Adrien. The reason her partner knew who she was. The reason Chat had ended the world.

As though she can hear the clamoring of her thoughts, Bunnyx reaches out with a steadying hand. It comes to rest on Marinette’s shoulder, where the sleeve of her nightshirt joins with her collar. 

"Look, Marinette, I know what you’re thinking. What happened—it wasn't either your fault or his." Her voice is firm, but surprisingly gentle. "I can't tell you much, but I can tell you this: you weren’t the one who hurt him, either this time or the last.”

Then she lifts her hand away, and she takes a step back, and she raises her free arm in a two-fingered salute.

She vanishes into her burrow as quickly as she arrived, and Marinette is alone, left behind in the dark.

  


* * *

  


Her next birthday comes and goes, and two weeks after the party, her friends break up.

It's mutual—as far as Marinette can tell—and about as amiable as two sixteen-year-olds can manage. But that doesn't lessen the lingering awkwardness of both Adrien and Kagami crashing in her bedroom, each stubbornly refusing to talk about the other.

In a strange turn of events, Kagami is easy to comfort. Marinette invites her over often, plying her with cookies and pain au chocolat left from the bakery’s morning sales. They walk three blocks to Marinette's favorite tea shop, and learn that Kagami likes peach with grass jelly. She calls the other girls in as backup, and they swarm Kagami like friendly moths, overwhelming her with warmth and chatter and company. 

After three weeks, finally, her sadness cracks.

"It’s for the best," she says—and then looks straight at Marinette, a strange contemplation written in her face. Somehow, Kagami sees straight through her; to the soft, selfish heart that beats behind her ribs.

Marinette doesn't know what to say. In the end, after deliberating, she gives her friend a hug. 

Adrien—usually so straightforward—is harder.

She knows he's skipping lessons (how, she'll never admit; but she still has his weekly schedule memorized). She knows he isn't talking to Nino, either. When he comes over—slinking through the back door of the bakery like a cat in search of a corner to curl up in—he’s bursting at the seams with trivial conversation. He talks about everything and nothing at all, keeping her company as she draws or sews.

"There's something I've been meaning to ask you about," he says one night. Marinette almost misses it over the whirring of her sewing machine.

"Yeah?"

Adrien fidgets, drawing his legs up to his chest. He’s sitting on her chaise, ostensibly doing homework, but she can’t shake the feeling that he’s watching her, instead.

"When I turned fourteen, my first birthday in public school...you're the one who made that scarf for me, weren't you?"

Marinette blinks. She hasn't thought about the scarf in _years._ Why is Adrien asking about it now, when she’s given him so many other gifts?

"You found out about that, huh? It's probably lucky you didn't know that it was from me.” She smiles, watching him duck behind the screen of his tablet. “The craftsmanship was shoddy. I’m much better now.”

"Nothing you make is shoddy," says Adrien, and then flushes, as though he's said something embarrassing. "I mean...even my father says that he’s impressed by you.”

Marinette’s heartbeat skips beneath his scrutiny. The raging house fire that was her crush on Adrien had long since simmered down into fondness; but still, it’s _Adrien_ , all height and smiles and legs, all earnest eyes and even more earnest words.

“I wish I was talented like you are,” he says now, “so I could make you something as nice as the things you’ve made for me.”

The warmth building up in her belly dampens. She pushes a smile onto her lips.

“You sound like this other friend of mine.” To keep her hands occupied, she turns back to her sewing, absentmindedly adjusting the lamp at her elbow. “I have a whole box full of his unfinished projects.”

“But you don’t wear them,” says Adrien, a little bit quietly. When she glances at him, he’s back to picking at his nails, though his cheeks and ears are still tinted red.

Something presses against the backs of her eyelids, wordless and speechless; an old, familiar ache.

“I would if I could,” is all that she says; and lets the quiet wash between them, like a half-remembered song.

  


* * *

  


She’s almost seventeen when the worst comes to pass. 

When Marinette lands on the rooftop, Chat Noir is waiting for her. His knees are tucked against his chest, and his tail is closely curled around his back. His ears are drooping, flat against his hair. He clutches himself and won’t look up, not even when Marinette steps over to his side and lowers herself to a wary seat.

"I'm sorry," he blurts, before she can so much as speak. "I was careless—it was so stupid—it's all my fault. I'm so sorry."

It isn't _Adrien’s_ fault in the slightest. Marinette balls her hands into fists and rubs her eyes with the tips of her knuckles.

"Chaton, you can relax, okay? I'm not going to take away your miraculous.”

His shoulders slacken an imperceptible fraction; although his posture is still tight, his face still pale.

"And I'm sorry, too. About how I reacted."

She'd fled from school, leaving Adrien in the locker room, forgetting the garden-variety akuma that _both_ of themhad just returned from fighting. Everything else was forgotten in the aftermath—wiped out by white-hot, boiling fear as she banged out the door and flew down the street.

She hid in a park for the rest of the afternoon; wandering, pacing, staring into space. Her parents called her no less than six times. When she finally slunk home, an hour before the bell, she told them—truthfully—that she’d suffered a panic attack.

"Mari—" Chat begins, and then cuts himself off. He swallows, throat bobbing in her peripheral vision.

"Ladybug," he starts again. "If you're not here to take my ring, then what did you want to talk to me about?”

Marinette doesn't want to talk about Chat Blanc. She doesn't even want to _think_ about Chat Blanc. She hurt Chat today—hurt him _badly_ —pushed them both a fraction closer to doomsday. But still. If only she could be so selfish as to let the secret slip from between her teeth.

She settles for a halfway comfort, instead; sliding across the roof until their thighs are brushing, then taking Chat’s chin into her hand.

He doesn't meet her eyes—not quite.

"When I ran out today," Marinette says slowly, "it wasn't because I was angry at you, or hurt. It wasn’t because I was disappointed at learning who you were. It’s just that I—“

Her eyes start to sting, and her breath rattles, _loud_. She inhales deeply, steadying herself for his sake—imagining her bones encased in steel.

"It's just that I'm scared," she says in a small voice. "Of something bad happening to you, now that we both know.”

Halfway comforts, halfway truths. Chat smiles weakly, but his ears are still flat.

"We've always known that something bad could happen," he says. "I've disappeared before, and so have you."

He lays his empty hand over hers, tugging it down so that it rests on the rooftop between them.

"This feels like it’s something to do with me. Me, as in _Adrien_. Who I am as a civilian."

 _You can do this, Marinette._ _Convince him otherwise._

But it seems that denial has finally failed her. A part of her—small but evergreen—had held onto the hope that _they’d both be alright_ so long as she wasn't in love with Chat. So long as she didn’t tell Chat her secrets. So long as she didn’t let him come sidling into her heart, with his cat’s smile and his tender eyes, as though the basement of her bones and the attic of her thoughts was a bright patch of sun he could curl himself up in. At home with her, as she was with him.

Too late, now. In another world, she would have laughed. 

“In collége,” she says, “I had the biggest crush on you.”

Chat freezes, from his head to the tip of his tail. Whatever he’d been expecting her to say, it wasn’t this.

“What?”

“I was in love with your civilian self, as Marinette,” she says baldly. “That’s why I turned you down as Ladybug.”

His mouth works soundlessly, but nothing comes out—not even a scoff, or a noise of confusion. 

“I thought that keeping our identities secret was the one good choice I’d ever made. I thought it would protect you—Chat and Adrien both.”

She stares at her hand in its bright red glove, with Chat’s resting heavy above it.

“That’s why I panicked,” she finishes quietly. “The fact that this is happening now—it feels like being the butt of some big, horrible joke.”

When Chat doesn’t respond, she takes the risk of glancing at him. He puts her in mind of a swimmer in murky water—as though he doesn’t quite know where his arms are, or his feet, or whether his head is upside down or upright.

Finally, he meets her eyes, and his fingers twist in his lap.

“You were in love with me?”

She nods, not speaking. Unhelpfully, her head swims.

“ _Were?”_ Chat repeats, in a quiet little voice that scoops out her insides and scatters them at her feet. “Past tense?”

He’s warm and close and real and _dear,_ yet so far away that the distance burns. The ache of it broadens, deepens, sweetens. She loves him without tense—in her particles, in her cells—in a terrible, too-close future that bleeds white across the backs of her eyelids. She loves, loved, _will_ love him; right here and at the ends of the earth—for whatever good her love has ever done him.

“Do you think…” Chat begins, and then trails off, hesitant. He stares at his boots in the very same way that Adrien stares at his shoes when he’s accosted by a camera.

“Do you think you might change your mind someday? When Hawkmoth is in prison, and there’s no longer any danger—would you ever feel that way about me again?”

His face—god, his _face—_ it gives him away. Marinette has the disorienting sense of having scraped three years off the surface of her skin. Of being back to the beginning—back to _their_ beginning—with time about to repeat in a dizzying loop. Chat looking at her, and her looking away, and her words locked up tight in the back of her throat.

She pulls her hand away and tucks it into her lap.

She says, “It’s not about how I feel.”

A frail, _needy_ part of her quickens in response to the ever-so-subtle shift in Chat’s face—the briefest, barest flash of hope.

“Then you still…”

“You said you’d moved on,” she reminds him quietly. “Who knows how long it’ll be until it’s safe? It could be years. It could be never.”

She’s too afraid to look at him—to see his face fall. All she can do is breathe in the silence, curling through her lungs like secondhand smoke.

“I understand, my lady,” says Chat, voice soft. And then, even softer: “I’ll see you for patrol tomorrow.”

It isn’t until midnight—when Marinette returns home—that it occurs to her she’d forgotten to pretend.

  


* * *

  


_It's only a matter of time._

In the days and weeks and months that come, the thought is never far from the forefront of her mind. It scratches at her eyelids, a keen, persistent itch—even as her and Adrien’s friendship deepens in ways she never thought possible, a great and green and growing thing.

_It's only a matter of time._

Every second with him is precious. She hoards his smiles—his delightful little blushes—like underworld currency, cold in the palm of her hand. With the end of the school year looming, they're both busier than ever: Marinette with her portfolio, Adrien with his activities. But he always finds his way into her company, and Marinette memorizes their moments of closeness.

(Wandering through the streets in their suits after dark, spiced hot chocolate thick on her tongue. Watching the shadows waver, like the wicks of ghostly candles.)

(Sitting on the overlarge sofa in his room—Adrien curled up catlike beside her, head on her thigh, arm around her waist.)

(Picking at assignments on Marinette’s bed, their backs baking in the sun through the skylight, until dusk painted over their square of sky.)

In class. On patrol. Out in the city with Alya and Nino. At her house, on the street, on the ever-constant rooftops—measuring their intimacy like rice in a famine.

(She'll want to remember him like this—laughing, filled with light—in the colder, harsher days to come.)

Adrien doesn’t seem dissatisfied with their friendship, or with the comfortable closeness that’s settled between them. But sometimes—if Marinette looks away at the skyline, or stares at her phone screen, feigning distraction—she can feel the brush of those too-soft eyes; following her as she moves, as she stirs, as she speaks.

_I only have so much time._

Sure enough—on the hottest day of summer—she arrives.

  


* * *

  


Chat is nowhere to be found.

This time, the air still smells of ash, and only the lowest streets are flooded. Marinette swings down boulevards that look wide for their emptiness, shivering despite the insulation of her suit. At first she peers through each shopfront she passes, searching for movement behind the grimy glass. But she sees only shapes—greying ghost faces—and she moves on swiftly, not looking again. 

No matter which part of Paris she searches, the broken moon looks down upon her. As disturbing as it is, it’s comforting in its constancy—a white disk of bone on bright china blue, haloed by its fragments, trapped in the amber of time. 

Like Marinette herself, dragged forward and then back, the red string of her love wound tight around her throat. 

When she finds him, finally, he's crouched in a dead-end alley, his face pressed into the ashen brick. Dust stains the perfect white of his suit. A trail of footprints leads into the alley behind him, smudged and uneven, as though he'd been stumbling.

If not for the footprints, he could have been a statue—like any one of the stony copies that Marinette had passed in her walk through the city.

Remembering the last time, she approaches carefully. How long had it been? Months? Maybe years? Trepidation throbs at the base of her throat. The longer it had been, the angrier he would be.

But Chat doesn't move, doesn't stir at the sound of her footsteps—not even when she stops a few steps behind him. She itches to touch him—brush his shoulder, his hair—but instead, she clutches her yo-yo tighter.

"Chat?"

No response, not even a twitch. Marinette swallows, her eyes starting to blur.

"Adrien?"

For a long minute, there's nothing but silence.

Then, without moving, the akuma starts humming. Marinette recognizes the melody at once.

By now, she knows that the song Adrien hums is one he made up himself as a child. He sings it so quietly, it's almost tuneless. As she braces, taking a tentative step forward, she sees that his lips are barely moving.

"Hey." It comes out steady, far from what she feels. "It's just me.”

This time, he does move—but only to curl away from her. Smaller and smaller, like he's hiding from the world, his ears laid flat amidst his snow-white hair.

"It's going to be okay. I'm here to save you."

Another breath—another step—and Marinette is at his side, close enough to feel the shudder that moves through him.

 _This isn't your Adrien,_ she reminds herself firmly. _You’re not his Marinette._

But she is.

He is.

_He is, he is, he is._

After all, Marinette is no longer pretending. She knows that if she takes his chin in her hand, tilting his head to bare his throat, there’ll be a tiny white scar—no thicker than a hair—where Chat had cut himself learning to shave. She knows his eyes and his lips and his hands and his hair; the curve of his cheekbone, the strength of his shoulder, the softness of his skin where it curves beneath his jaw. There’s no part of Chat that Marinette doesn't cherish, and no part of _Adrien_ that her thoughts haven't touched.

She knows how she came to love him, too. Quickly the first time, and slowly the second—like a frog in boiling water, selfish to the bone.

She reaches past the barrier of Chat Blanc’s shoulder, closing her fingers around the bell at his throat. He trembles when she does it, like he's been touched by a dead thing. But he doesn't stop singing, and he doesn't lift his head. She twists her hand, hard, and the bell snaps off in her grip.

Violet magic boils out. The butterfly leaps out—a ghastly, flickering thing—and vanishes into her yo-yo with a snap of her wrist. His eyes fly open: blue, and then green.

“Chaton,” says Marinette, infusing her voice with urgency. His head snaps up to see her, and he stares at her, wide-eyed. She grabs his face in both hands, silently apologizing as he jerks.

“Tell me what happened,” she says in a rush. He’s dripping with magic, the color of deep night, his white sloughing away to reveal black beneath it. But still—even now—he blinks at her, unseeing. Desperation burns her throat. 

“Adrien,” she repeats. It leaves her as a whisper, but at last, his eyes sharpen, and he fixates on her face. “How did it happen? Who hurt you this badly? You need to tell me everything. The month, the day, the time—“

The sentence is still on its way out of her mouth when a hand clamps down on her shoulder from behind, and her vision whites out in a dizzying rush.

“No! Let me talk to him! Alix, _please!_ ”

Bunnyx’s arms wrap around her, strong and slim and infuriatingly tight. How can she _still_ be so much stronger? She kicks and writhes, but the world converges, and Chat Blanc slips from between her fingers.

A ghost, a lost thing—that’s the love of her life.

That’s her, falling down through the middle of time; her skin turning warm, her eyes turning clear, her clenched teeth rattling like rosary beads.


	2. Chapter 2

She comes to swinging, spitting, snarling. She's a feral beast—all tightly wound springs—and it's clear that Bunnyx is able to sense it. She releases her, quickly, and takes a step back; fisting her hands against her sides as Marinette whirls on her in fury.

"Why did you stop me?”

"You know why," comes the predictable answer. Marinette's anger doubles, uncontrollable.

"This is supposed to be _your_ job, not mine. _You’re_ supposed to stop this from happening in the first place! I don't know if you can't or if you simply don't care, but I’m not going to let you get in my way.”

"Marinette, I understand how you feel."

"Do you?" says Marinette. She sounds like a child—a little girl throwing a tantrum—and she hates it, _hates it_ , with a heat that won't burn out. "Is Adrien your partner? Is he your best friend? Are you the one who’s spent the last three _years_ being afraid of everything you do, everything you _feel_ , because nobody is willing to tell you what you did to end the world? What’s the point of fixing it if it just breaks again? What’s the point of _Ladybug_ if she can’t save _Chat Noir?”_

She sucks in a breath, lining her throat in hot lead. To her credit, Bunnyx doesn’t flinch.

"I can't give you the answers you're asking for," she says evenly. "Just because I’ve seen the future doesn’t mean that I can control it.”

She closes her umbrella, then makes it vanish in a neon-blue explosion of light.

"Time isn't a clear chain of cause and effect. It's more like a circle—everything connected, with every reality that exists interlinked. You can't manipulate the timeline to your will; you can only do your best to keep it in balance."

"How long?" she interrupts, and Bunnyx blinks, wary.

"Sorry?"

"How long do I have to do this until it _stops?_ ”

When Bunnyx doesn't answer, Marinette starts to pace. They’re in a cloistered alley that blocks off the wind, and yet her ears are filled with a wordless whining.

"Another year?" she says, studying Bunnyx's face for a reaction. But it remains impassive as she continues: "Two years? Three? Five years? Ten?"

The other girl’s silence is answer enough. Marinette grinds to a jerky stop.

"I can't.”

Her eyes and throat are clogged with tears, compounding the shame of the words that have left her mouth.

"I can't," she croaks—and the misery of it consumes her, turning over each part of her in turn. "You were wrong about me. I'm not strong enough."

There it is, then: the terrible truth of herself, stark as a bruise on her reflection’s face. How long has Marinette been looking away? How long has she been lying to Chat, to _everyone,_ about the boy all in white at the end of the world? She needs so much _more_ than the ghost of love to live on—

—and Adrien. He gives her _so much_ to love.

She waits for Bunnyx to say something predictable— _of course you are, you're stronger than anyone._ But instead she only smiles, too sadly to be sincere. 

"What would make you strong enough, then?”

She isn't expecting the question, and she doesn't have an answer. But Bunnyx must have guessed at one, nonetheless. She takes her shoulder in that familiar way of hers, framing a black spot between her spread fingers.

"Whatever you decide to do, you _must_ think it through. Change your timeline, and you'll change mine, too. The next time I see you, a great deal might be different.”

The circular portal opens behind her, casting a brilliant blue-white glow. Bunnyx turns towards it, her face edged in light. 

“Even so, we all decide our own futures, Marinette. Even you. Especially you.”

There’s no judgment in her voice—only sympathy, and warmth. With no more wasted words, she departs.

  


* * *

  


The moon has risen by the time she arrives, and Marinette lands in Adrien's bedroom with a sound like stepping in freshly fallen snow.

The lights are off, and the room is dark. But Adrien is seated on the carpet next to his couch, ringed by a circle of electric candles. His hair is messy, as though he's fresh out of bed. Marinette itches with the lowborn desire to tuck his bangs behind his ears.

She may as well be fourteen again, falling into pieces at every little glimpse of him. But this time, she'll tell him everything she needs to tell him. She’s planned this too carefully to turn back now.

"I hope you brought snacks," says Adrien brightly. He scrambles up to greet her, and she sees that his feet are bare, and that the shaggy hair at the back of his head is tied into a tiny, ridiculous tail. Catching her staring, he strikes a ridiculous pose.

"Like what you see? It's Adrien after dark."

"Don't hurt yourself, hot stuff," Marinette replies, and he grins, plopping down on the sofa behind him.

"So, what did you want to talk to me about?"

Her throat seizes up. Her stomach turns over. She makes her way over to the sofa and sits, pulling out pastries from the basket beneath her arm: passionfruit palmiers, coconut buns with raisins, almond rolls sticky with brown sugar glaze. 

"I'm panicking about le bac." The lie slips out from habit, before she can think to stop it. "With Hawkmoth’s most recent patterns, I'm barely getting time to study. And I'm not competitive enough with just my portfolio."

"Bug," says Adrien, "first of all, the school year has just started, and secondly, your portfolio is industry standard—”

The rest of his argument is blotted out by the buzz of anxiety that fills her ears. She'd kept her suit on to lend her resolve; but for once, Ladybug’s luck doesn't seem to have blessed her.

"—could always come over at night so we can—"

"Go over your study plan with me," she blurts. If she can just _talk_ to him as usual, then maybe she’ll convince herself that tonight is a normal night. Maybe she'll be able to trick herself into believing that the future doesn't hinge on whether she trips over her words.

Adrien looks startled, but he nods.

By one in the morning, the buzzing in her skull has dimmed. By two, her overactive instincts have slowed, lulled by sugar and the darkened windows and the comfortable worries of her civilian life.

At two thirty, Adrien is curled into the corner of the couch, and his head is next to the sofa arm, just beside Marinette's shoulder. He's still talking, sleepily, though his words have started to loop. The conversation has long moved onto other things, and Marinette's right hand is at a distant remove to her body, stroking the spots on Adrien's scalp where his ears would appear if he was transformed.

She can tell—from the faint reverberation in his chest—that he’s trying not to purr, for embarrassment’s sake. Her laughter is trapped beneath her tongue, along with the words that she still has to say.

Her fingers glide down the part in his hair, rumpling his bedhead even further. It soothes her more than it soothes him; but it must be enough, because at last, her mouth opens.

"Chaton, I want to tell you something.”

Adrien is abruptly awake, eyes open and fixed to her face.

"I…I guess it's kind of silly, really. It’s kind of a bad dream that I had about you.”

"About me?" he asks, his forehead crinkling. "Is it the one where you confess your love to me on Valentine's Day, and then look down and see that you're naked?"

"Shut up,” says Marinette, and Adrien smirks.

"Is it the one where I marry Chloe and we name our hamster after you?"

She takes her hand out of his hair and pinches him, hard. Adrien gives a squeak of complaint, wriggling into the back of the couch.

"Is it the one where you try to kiss my wax statue at the museum, and then turns out it's really me? Oh, hold on. That really happened."

"You’re a pest," she says, though the sentiment is half-hearted. "See if I ever bring you pastries again."

"Buginette, no. I’m sorry, honest." He sounds so _earnest_ that she can't bite back. "Tell me what it was. I’m listening, I swear."

"Promise me you'll take it seriously?"

"Of course, my lady." He winks, lopsided. "Being serious is my specialty."

 _My lady._ It's only the oldest of the affectionate nicknames that Adrien invents for her on a daily basis, but still, her throat squeezes shut like a fist.

"In the dream," she says slowly, "I'm transformed, swinging through Paris, but it looks so different to the one I know. The streets are all flooded, like it’s the middle of the ocean. Everywhere I look, there's nothing but water, and it's empty, and quiet, and white, and cold."

Adrien rolls over to face her, propping his cheek up in his palm. His eyes are smudged with sleep, his bangs endearingly rumpled. Marinette resists the compulsive urge to touch him.

"When I find you,” she says, “you look different, too.”

Everything hurts—her head, her throat, her stomach. As though she's trying to expel some poisonous creature out of her belly and into the air.

"Your suit's all white, and so is your hair, and your eyes are blue—the brightest blue I’ve ever seen.”

"You mean...like I've been turned into an akuma, or something?"

"Yeah," says Marinette, in that falsely light voice—and now she's breathing syrup-slow, forcing herself to loosen her grip on the couch. She’s still transformed, and if she doesn’t mind her strength, she’ll punch through wood and steel like foam. "Like you're an akuma, but not one controlled by Hawkmoth. He's lost beneath the water, just like everyone else."

He's looking at her now, all signs of humor gone. His knuckles have left a white indent in his cheek.

"Sometimes, dream Chat is excited to see me. But he’s angry with me too, because he knew a different version of me, and something terrible happened to her, and now he’s all alone." If this is the only way she can tell him, then at least it shares the same notes as the truth. "Sometimes he fights me straight away. But sometimes he talks about her—the other Marinette, the one that he knew in his own place and time."

"What happens after that?"

"We fight, and I save him," says Marinette quietly. "And then I wake up where I was.”

It doesn't ache any less, for the fact that she expects it—the relief that falls over Adrien's face, and the subtle slackening of his shoulders.

"Oh. Well, that's... I mean, I don't know about the apocalypse stuff, but if I ever got turned into an akuma, you'd definitely kick my ass."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah, obviously. And then I'd probably thank you."

She laughs, but the sound is thin to her own ears. The hurt that she carries has its own separate pulse—like a second heartbeat, slow and sleepy.

“It’s good to know that you believe in me,” she says. Never mind that she's failed him too many times already—not once, not twice, but three times in three years. Never mind that she’s failing him _this very instant_ —letting his warmth seep into her skin, his laugh lace her blood like liquor, while she lies and hides and boils alive in the bitter stew of Ladybug’s secrets.

Adrien doesn’t quite smile in response. Instead he reaches for her, as he so often does; and this time, she lets him wrap his arm around her, tugging her up to his seat on the couch.

"I want to tell you something too," he says easily. He never struggles with words the way she does. She's a small, stiff thing against his side, but she wishes she could cling to him, like a burr to a woolen sleeve.

"If something ever happened to me someday—if I got hurt, or akumatized, or something else..." He trails off, gauging her mood, before he resumes. "I mean, it might just be a nightmare, but we can't guarantee it'll never happen, right?"

"No," says Marinette, with a dry rasp of a laugh. Adrien lifts his chin, for once unreadable.

"Even if it happened, I wouldn’t blame you for a second. Being Chat Noir was worth it. And knowing _you_ was worth it."

Then he slides his arm from around her and lays down on the couch, pillowing his head in the crook of his elbow. Blinking at her dozily, as though he hasn’t just _rewritten_ her—as though he’s said nothing especially noteworthy at all.

She threads her fingers back into his hair, scratching gently along his scalp until Adrien yawns and closes his eyes. A low rumble builds in his chest. Marinette is tired too, and her head is heavy, and her tongue tastes like brown sugar glaze and bitterness; but she keeps her eyes open to watch him a little longer.

She stays awake, and she lets him sleep.

  


* * *

  


Weeks go past, and the secret stays with her, the smallest of whispers in the back of her memory.

But it’s only a whisper now—not a scream, and not a howl. She no longer buckles beneath its weight. She no longer feels it like burning metal pressed to every inch of the inside of her skin.

She’s primed him for the truth, as gently as she knows how—and now all there is to do is wait.

  


* * *

  


Marinette ends her eighteenth birthday the closest to happy she has been in years, champagne-drunk and waterlogged with warmth.

“Hey, buginette. Still awake up there?”

She's eaten so much cake that her spit tastes like frosting. But still, there's more gifts and more cards and more letters; brightly colored heaps of them, piled up like candy hearts. It's well past midnight, but tomorrow is a weekend, and Marinette has never felt so content. 

"I'm tired," she mumbles. "Why are you still here, anyway? Don't you have a photoshoot tomorrow?"

"What, and deny you the gift of my presence?”

"I want the receipt," Marinette shoots back, planting her foot against Chat’s chest and shoving him backwards into the wall. He reaches past her leg and swipes her bowl of buttercream.

_"Hey!"_

"It's two AM and you've had enough."

"Three, and it’s my birthday, and I’m an adult now.”

"Not until seven AM tomorrow, you're not."

"You're three months older than me," says Marinette, incredulous. Chat lifts the near-empty bowl to his face and licks the rim primly, with the tip of his pink tongue.

"Respect for elders is a virtue, mademoiselle."

"Says _you,_ breaking curfew for the third time this week."

"What’s the problem? Don't you want me here?"

It's easy to be with Chat when he's like this. Laughing, smiling, full of jokes and banter. Other times—other nights—it’s harder than she’d like to admit. The silence stretches on, unspooling between her fingers, as they both get lost in the spaces between their words.

Adrien looking at her, and her looking away. Four years and three apocalypses, Marinette thinks wearily, and so little between them has truly changed.

"Are you staying?" she yawns, before Chat can comment on the sudden melancholy slant to her mood. "I can make up the chaise for you, like usual."

"Better not," he says reluctantly. "I can't risk being late."

"We're about to graduate, you know. He can't pull you out of school anymore."

"But think of the headlines, miss Marinette. _Chat Noir caught in a tryst with a civilian, daughter of the best bakers in Paris!"_

"Keep dreaming," says Marinette, and he gives a half smile. Her heart bumps clumsily against the underside of her ribs.

She lets him polish off the rest of the buttercream, then climbs up the ladder in order to open the door to her balcony. Chat slips out just as easily as always. His suit disappears into the black of the night sky, leaving only his eyes, in luminous green.

"Wait," she says suddenly—and those eyes snap back to her. The cool air through the trapdoor ruffles her fringe. He takes a step or two down the ladder, into the honey-colored light that fills her bedroom loft.

(Adrien looks at her, and she looks back.)

"I want my present," says Marinette eventually, and his eyebrows hitch behind his mask.

"I gave you one earlier. At your party, remember?”

"You used to give me two. One for Adrien, and one for Chat. "

"Well," says Chat, his tone turning teasing, "it's a hard knock life for the Heroine of Paris."

Marinette grips the handrails of the ladder and hoists herself up onto the lowest rung. Another step up, and her face is level with Chat's, her hands white-knuckled on either side of his hips.

The boy in front of her is older, now, than the one that still resides in the quiet places of her memory. His shoulders are broader; and his voice is deeper; and his hair is wilder, tied back in a golden tail. He blinks at her, bemused, and she grips the ladder harder.

"I want my gift," she repeats, a little hoarsely—and before fear or embarrassment or better judgment can kick in, she leans in and kisses the corner of his mouth, cupping his cheek below the raised black edge of his mask.

By the time she pulls away, Chat's face is red with shock. She hopes so, anyway—it's hard to tell with the warmth of the room.

"Goodnight," she says quietly; because this is the best she can offer him. A halfway kiss, a brush of their bare fingers, the gentle bump of their shoulders through their suits. It's a cruel thing she's doing, stringing Adrien out with scraps. Making him _wait_ for her, year after year after year, when he only knows half of the truth of why he’s waiting.

"Goodnight," Chat murmurs, after a moment of quiet; and Marinette can’t _stand_ the softness she hears behind it. She clambers down the ladder, down the stairs beside her bed, and stands in the shadow from the trapdoor, looking up.

Looking up, not away—

—looking forward, not back.

  


* * *

  


The fourth time—when Bunnyx’s portal opens above the rooftops, where Marinette is waiting to start patrol—she’s ready for her.

She _has_ been ready—as ready as she'll ever be—for the last seven months and twenty-two days. All of it builds up to this one brilliant moment; when she opens her mouth and the right words come out, for the first time in longer than Marinette can remember.

"I thought about what you asked me last time," she says, and Bunnyx cocks her head with interest. She looks no different to the last time she saw her. Maybe Marinette has changed, instead—a few extra centimeters of height from her last growth spurt, and a few extra memories for luck beneath her belt.

They're almost the same height now. The rabbit hero no longer seems like a mentor, but a peer whom she can speak to face to face.

"You’re the Guardian, Marinette. It’s your decision. But I trust that you understand the risk."

Marinette lifts a hand towards her own masked face, to the magicked material below her right eye.

"All this time,” she says slowly, “I’ve been keeping Chat Blanc a secret; and whenever it happens again, I assume it’s because I failed. But what you told me last time—about keeping the timeline in balance? Maybe _balance_ was the key all along.”

A memory occurs to her, clear as day—Chat Blanc tapping the bell at his collar, hinting at where his akuma was hidden. Something drums inside her chest, hot and sharp and slick and splitting.

“Maybe I’m not meant to do this alone,” she says quietly. “Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing all this time.”

To her relief, Bunnyx doesn't contest her—just nods, curtly, and steps back towards the portal behind her.

"I thought you might say that."

"You thought, or you knew?"

"I have to keep _some_ secrets," comes her easy reply. "Be quick about it, then. We need to go now.”

Suddenly grateful for the emptiness of the rooftops, Marinette turns into the privacy of the shadows, plucking her yo-yo from its place at her belt.

She lifts it to her ear, and she dials.

  


* * *

  


The last time Marinette sees the end of the world, she's almost nineteen, and the open sky is the same color as the sea.

Chat Noir is beside her, black and gold and green, his wide eyes growing wider as he takes everything in. The ruined city, the flooded streets. The silhouette of the moon in the cloudless sky, like the dessicated husk of some dead, eldritch thing. 

"Ladybug?" he whispers as the portal closes behind them, winking into nothing, a blink of blue lightning. "Where are we going? What's going on?"

In answer, she reaches out and takes his hand inside her own. Chat is almost too distracted to notice. Every lean muscle is taut with alertness, his cat ears pricked and his shoulders tense.

"We're in the future," she tells him. "But it's okay, Chat. Bunnyx can't come with us, but she brought us here in order to prevent this."

Without releasing her grip on Chat’s hand, she steps forward, making her way towards the edge of the rooftop. Chat hurries after her, his footfalls too loud, _crunch-crunch-crunching_ in a layer of white dust.

"Who—" he begins—and then he looks down, at the chalky powder dusting his boots.

He cranes his neck to look up at the hollowed-out moon, and Marinette sees the moment that realization dawns.

"This is—" he starts, but then stops, swallowing thickly. When she focuses past the clamoring in her skull, she can feel his eyes boring into her back.

"Isn't this your nightmare? The one that you told me about?"

She stares at the point where the horizon meets the sky—blue on blue on endless blue—and lets him tether her to the earth beneath her feet. 

"Yeah," she whispers, and his grip grows tight.

"Then the akuma we're looking for—"

"Adrien," says Marinette, and his head snaps around in surprise. She rarely uses his civilian name in-costume. It’s far too easy for a slip of the tongue to give both her and Chat away—too easy to lose the world in the span of a blink.

"That night I told you about my nightmare, I was really trying to tell you the truth.”

She can feel his pulse hammering in the hollow of his wrist, quick and deadly against the calloused pad of her thumb. His eyes are unfocused, darting past her, scanning the silent water below.

"I’ve been here before," she tells him hoarsely. "I need you to trust me. Just until this is over."

For a moment, she thinks he hasn't heard her. But then his gaze flickers back to her, sharp enough to cut. Marinette feels her breath catch beneath it, the slightest stutter, too small to see.

"Okay," says Chat, his voice too quiet in the vast, crushing silence all around them. "Okay, Marinette."

They travel past landmarks obscured by ash; through streets clogged with rubble, like concrete arteries. They must be a month or less into the apocalypse, because parts of Paris are still unflooded. Marinette still remembers the first time she came here—how she’d been forced to leap between cars and buildings in order to keep ahead of Chat Blanc. How she’d fallen into water colder than death, and tasted ice and ash and rot.

She clutches Chat tighter—and tighter, still—until he squeezes her fingers into relaxing.

This time, the akuma is hiding in plain sight. Marinette spots him first: a blurry white shadow hunched at the edge of a rusted carousel. She remembers the park—she used to bring Manon here. The memory is fuzzy, spotted with age, but she still has pictures from Adrien's shoots here.

Chat must remember it too, because his face is sheet-pale, and his fingers tremble where they’re hooked between her own.

If he'd meant to say anything, he doesn't get the chance. The husk of a twig cracks into dust beneath his foot—

—and the akuma turns to see them, his eyes ghost blue, his lips drawn back in a scarlet snarl.

  


* * *

  


Chat is the quietest he's ever been.

He says nothing as Marinette tosses her yo-yo into the air, bathing new Paris in glowing spirals that blot out its eerily perfect sky. 

He says nothing when Chat Blanc collapses at their feet, reverting into a perfect doppelganger of himself, complete with gold hair and greyed-out eyes. 

He says nothing when Bunnyx reappears in their midst with all the sound and fury of a thunderclap, taking one of them in each hand and yanking them headlong into her burrow.

And he says nothing after she vanishes—not for the longest time. Not even when they’re standing on the streets of their own city, beneath a warm evening sky already tinted with night.

In lieu of any other ideas, she takes him to a cafe just off their usual route. The cashier refuses to let her pay, and half an hour later, they’re sitting above the boulevard, holding a cup of hot cocoa each.

Fifteen minutes into the wait, Marinette's drink has cooled, and she feels as though she's swallowed a handful of hailstones. But just as she's about to speak, Chat—who's hunched beside her—finally clears his throat.

"How many times has this happened before?"

 _Clever kitty._ He's put it together already. Instead of looking at Chat, she stares at the lights below.

"This is the fourth time,” she tells him, with a bodiless sense of calm. She hears it when the oxygen rushes out of his lungs.

"The _fourth?_ How? How long has this been going on?"

"The first time was when we were fourteen. Since then, it's happened at least once with every birthday. It's not exact, though. There’s no pattern that I can see.”

Her partner is staring at her in abject horror, and Marinette’s stomach starts to sink.

"Bunnyx won't tell me why it keeps happening," she continues—and she _hates_ how her voice insists on shivering, giving away the worst of her fears. "I’m not even sure that there’s only _one_ reason. I thought it had to do with you finding out my identity, but you know who I am now, and nothing has changed. Then I thought it had to do with us getting together."

"But we're not—" His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, and he half-turns away from her, staring at the cup in his hands.

"We've never been together, Marinette."

It's halfway to a question, and though his shoulders are hunched, she's almost certain that Chat is staring at her.

"I think that Chat Blanc was with the Marinette in his timeline. She died with everyone else. That's why Bunnyx needs me."

Against her own best interest, she chances a glance at him—and immediately regrets it as her veins run cold.

Chat's face has drained of blood entirely. He’s paler than Marinette has ever seen him—bleached by the bone-white glow of the streetlights. His eyes are the only color in his face, and Marinette latches onto it, an unlikely lifeline.

“If this has been happening for years, then why…” His tone of voice is frighteningly brittle. “Why are you only telling me about it now?”

The grip on her windpipe finally breaks, and words come bubbling out like boiling water.

“Because I didn’t want you to know,” she blurts. Her eyes are too dry for tears, but they blur nonetheless, and she scrubs at them furiously with the back of her hand. “I wanted to be strong as you think I am. I wanted you to be _right_ for believing in me, the way you always have, from the very beginning.” 

He stares at her, then, as though he’s seeing her for the first time; as though the curtain between them has finally parted. Even now— _even now—_ she burns when Chat looks at her. If only she could feel something simple when she looked back; love or yearning or misery or hope, not all of them together, bottled into one. 

“I know I’m supposed to be able to save you,” she gulps. “And I wish I could figure out how, but I can’t.”

Even though her throat is stuffed with sand, and her hands are shaking around her paper cup, it feels as though a weight has finally lifted off her chest.

“So you deserve to know,” she rasps, as she turns away from Chat and blinks at the shopfronts winking in the blackness beneath them. “And you deserve to decide whether it’s worth it, after all.”

In the perfect darkness of nightfall, a velvet ceiling above them, the windows of Paris blink like dragon’s eyes. The selfish thing inside her shrieks: _say that it is. Say that I am. Say that you’ll wait, the way that I’ve waited; say that you want it, the way that I want it._

“Marinette,” Chat whispers, in a voice that cracks with sympathy. “My lady, I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

“You shouldn’t always apologize for things that aren’t your fault.”

He leans across the rooftop, awkward with his extra height. Marinette puts down her cocoa before it spills into her lap. She closes her eyes as his arms close around her; warm despite the coolness of his suit, and ferocious despite the softness in his voice.

“It’s not that,” he replies, more gently than she deserves. “It’s knowing you spent the last four _years_ keeping everything about this to yourself. Not telling me, or anyone else. Having to pretend to my face that everything was okay.”

“So?” says Marinette, a little bit confused now—even though Chat is very warm, and his lips are _very_ close to her face. She’d run her fingers through his hair, but she doesn’t have the energy to break his embrace.

“Marinette,” he says firmly, “of course I think it’s worth it. I'd never regret believing in you. But that doesn’t mean that feeling alone is easier for you than it is for me.”

Her gut gives a predictable little twist. How could it be possible that she still felt alone, when her friendship with Chat had never faltered? She’d never thought that loving him could wear her thin the way it did—drive her mad the way it did; make her _weak_ the way it did. She’d never thought that _Adrien,_ with all his wonderful gentleness, could settle in her stomach with such tremendous weight. 

But there’s comfort in it, too, and a vast, bitter relief—to know he’ll still be with her, even at the end of the world. It makes it very nearly bearable; that all the years she’s shared with Adrien keep tugging them apart, and then together, and then apart.

“You might be the one who casts the cure at the end,” says Chat, “but you were never meant to fix this on your own.”

He pulls back, tucking Marinette into the crook of his arm and propping her up beneath his chin. For a moment, she hesitates, unsure of how to move. But then—with a sense of déjà vu, as though she’s done the same thing in another life—she presses herself against Chat’s side and tips her head to meet his shoulder.

She sits beside Chat Noir beneath a smog full of stars, and she lays her heavy head to rest.


End file.
